Environmental Catastrophes Top Ten And Other Abominations

In his series of paintings 'Environmental Catastrophes Top Ten And Other Abominations' Rubsamen pokes fun at our need to make lists and hierarchies to codify the bad and the good. If we Google 'Worst man-made environmental disasters in history' the screen fills with sites offering lists. If we toggle the images button on the top of the page, the lists become images. Finding a commemorative image of an ecological disaster, an environmental tragedy or a moral trauma involves a set of priorities both aesthetic as well as pragmatic. The image must carry the message and it must have the potential of timelessness. The image must be beautiful as well as horrific. In this important book Rubsamen and Skarli investigate, pictorially and theoretically, the new complexity evolving in the relationship between nationalism, cosmopolitanism, and globalization in the rituals of commemoration.